aggregate/channels reporting discrepancy

[indias next no1]

Hi friends,
as my stats are not updated, i like to whether anyone facing the same problem. becuase my webstats and adsense stats differs, that's why the question?

[adrianTNT]

I remembered something ...
I didnt see anyone posting about the same details but...
About the same time when I saw stats issues I noticed some problems on one of my sites:

The page stopped loading at the exact position where AdSense ware supposed to load, I have 3 ad locations in that layout, keept refreshing pages and when page loading stopped it was always in an area where ad was supposed to load.

So is this a lag or something similar, maybe someone is flooding their servers or something? Ads not showing can also be the problem with low click rate and low impressions count.

So maybe it is an ad display problem and not a stats problem?!

[icedowl]

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around why it might take longer to fix than it took to break. Simply undo what was done.

I just want my custom channels back. Now.

[loudspeaker]

When a large publicly traded company has a core service, it really needs to test on a small scale and work out the bugs before going live to thousands of its clients.

Well, I am just amazed Google is not communicating with anybody on this. Stuff happens, but one would expect a large public company whose CORE service is seriously affected to be on top of their game and their PR department answering questions.

But saying NOTHING for more than 36 hours? I don't even understand if it's Google's classic "don't bother us / you don't deserve a response / we'll fix it when we get to it / we didn't promise you anything in the first place" attitude or they are really too busy fixing it to talk to us.

Unless this affects only a really insignificant portion of AdSense publishers (and, frankly, even then!), I'd say this is hardly the way to handle the situation.

[frakilk]

But saying NOTHING for more than 36 hours? I don't even understand if it's Google's typical "don't bother us / you don't deserve a response / we'll fix it when we get to it / we didn't promise you anything in the first place" attitude or they are really too busy fixing it to talk to us.

This is because there is no major competitor/alternative to AdSense. You can bet that if Yahoo/MSN actually had a decent product they would be handling it differently. But for now why rush, where are we going to go?

[adrianTNT]

This is because there is no major competitor/alternative to AdSense... where are we going to go?

Agree. They really need some competition.

[woop01]

Sticky technical issues happen at companies with competition too.

[zjacob]

On the issue of competition, we're now 4 dog/internet years into Adsense, and still no real competition to speak of. Unbelievable.

[littlegiant]

"The page stopped loading at the exact position where AdSense ware supposed to load, I have 3 ad locations in that layout, keept refreshing pages and when page loading stopped it was always in an area where ad was supposed to load."

I noticed this too. In Firefox, pages would stall on pagead2.googlesyndication. The ad would load but the page would hang for some time and then finally finish loading.

Also for the benefit of those who aren't aware, Adsense Advisor did actually make an announcement about this glitch here on WebmasterWorld although it was on another thread I think. But he said the engineers were aware of the problem and were working on rectifying it as quickly as possible.

[sutrostyle]

It's not clear whether Yahoo/MSN competition would be good or bad- it may actually drive prices and payoffs to publishers down.

[koan]

On the issue of competition, we're now 4 dog/internet years into Adsense, and still no real competition to speak of. Unbelievable.

If you check old threads, you'll see that people were complaining about the lack of decent competition 2-3 years ago but were hopeful by now it would obviously be a done deal.

Yahoo is still in beta and limited to the US market, with apparently big targeting problems.

Don't get your hopes up.

[TheSkepticGuy]

Has anyone noticed a corresponding drop in total impressions with this issue as well?

Like clock-work, we typically deliver AdSense impressions to 66% of our total daily page impressions when comparing with Google Analytics. As soon as this reporting issue hit, daily impressions are now at 53% of delivered pages... and obviously, total clicks are down as well.

Anyone else?

[sutrostyle]

Has anyone noticed a corresponding drop in total impressions with this issue as well?

We noticed a corresponding drop in ecpm actually by about 30%. Today will be the lowest day in 2007.
Page impressions total seems normal.

[netmeg]

Are any AdWords advertisers seeing a lower than usual cost to advertise on key sites in the Content Network? Or fewer clicks than usual? Is this bug showing up on both sides of the 'fence'?

Nope. If anything, clicks and impressions are UP on the AdWords side for me. So someone is gettin' that money...

[dibbern2]

Oh, it not that big a deal.

Impressions, earnings, eCPM are all within normal ranges. It's just the channel data, and that's no crisis. It will be back.

Relax. Go create some content. Take a day off.

[al_h_5]

dibbern2,
My earnings, impressions etc. ARE affected by this --- not just channels. It started Friday evening, and that's when the discrepancy between traffic stats and impressions began for me.

[Atomic]

I'm having a hard time believing that statistics right now. When I look my sites over the ads are the sames. When I view the logs traffic is the same as it ever was. Perhaps what I'm seeing in my reports is corect but I wouldn't bet on it.

[phantombookman]

For the second day running my blog is showing less than 5% of it's usual number of clicks and earnings on that channel are $0!

Others seem to be OK though?

[alephh]

For me, channels has been totally, entirely, completely and wholly dead for 48 hours.

Total earnings are down.

Google doesn't tell us anything - except one non-informative message "there is a problem" (no kidding, the whole Internet has been talking about it for the last 24 hours) on forum. When my ISP has problem they inform me, when my shop cannot deliver they inform me. Every company informs customers. Oh, sorry, except G.

The day there is a good competitor to AdSense and this happens again, very large percentage of publishers will be leaving AdSense for life.

They really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really need to test their codes more before adding new features or doing 'maintenances'.

How many airlines do critical changes on their core business (=airplanes) without testing? "Oh sorry, it seems that all our airplanes crashed." (Of course G wouldn't be that informative, they would say something like: "there seems to be a problem" 24 hours after crashed happened.

[HarryM]

As has been mentioned earlier, this may not be just a channel stats problem. For me the problem started on the 19th. From that date clicks and earnings on the channel stats are less than those in the aggregate stats. But this also coincides with a very signicificant drop in clicks on both stats.

So have clicks from the 19th gone unrecorded? It's not just a question of Google fixing the current problem. To regain my confidence they would need to demonstrate that all clicks have been recorded, and also that earnings during the problem period have not been smart-priced down because of their problem.

Incidentally, comparing yesterday's eCPM with my normal, it looks as if Google reset my smart pricing yesterday.

[zett]

When my ISP has problem they inform me, when my shop cannot deliver they inform me. Every company informs customers.

Yeah, every company informs customers. Except - we are no customers to Google. We are suppliers to them, a group of people who get money in exchange for a service we provide to them (getting traffic in this case). Clearly, they do not care about us. That's why their communication seems to be soo much better on Adwords than on our side of the fence (hint: Adwords users are customers in Google's eyes).

[levo]

aha!

Friday, October 19, 2007, same price drop for me too.. I have raised my adwords bids and adsense got tanked on that day.. for the last 7 days I was working 18 hours/day with my adwords account.. and when the channel data stopped, I was trying multiple channel tracking for the first time.. Took 4 hours to understand that it was not me but google..

I choose the "best" time to optimize my adwords account after 3 years..

[adrianTNT]

... their communication seems to be soo much better on Adwords than on our side of the fence (hint: Adwords users are customers in Google's eyes).

The advertisers are the ones with the money in this case.
Every company cares more about the people that holds the money.

// Same with paypal, they do not have much respect for the seller, but if a client comes and asks for their money back, for almost any reason, paypal takes the money from the seller and give it back to client. Sorry for the offtopic, I was trying to make a point.

[edited by: adrianTNT at 11:11 am (utc) on Oct. 25, 2007]

[Scurramunga]

hat's why their communication seems to be soo much better on Adwords than on our side

Yeah, I'll be willing to bet that Advertisers know more about how and when smartpricing works than publishers do.

[DXL]

As much money as G makes, they need to hire some better in-house techs to get things working again. Or at least send an email to publishers letting them know what the story is. At least hosting companies tell you "we know about the problem, it will probably be 12 hours before we fix it."

[zett]

send an email to publishers letting them know what the story is. At least hosting companies tell you "we know about the problem, it will probably be 12 hours before we fix it."

Whoa! Wait a minute. Look at this message...

From: AdSenseAdvisor [Senior Member]
#: 3485511
posted: 9:51 pm on Oct 23, 2007 (utc 0)
joined: Dec 4, 2003
posts: 689

Our engineers are aware of this aggregate/channels reporting discrepancy and are working on resolving it as quickly as they can. I'll let you know when I know more.
Sorry for any confusion.
-ASA

[sarcasm]
Personally, I think this is more than enough. They know about the problem and will be fixing it. It's barely 48 hours later now. How can you possibly expect to get more information? You have to wait on the fix anyway. Or do you want an apology? I don't see how that would benefit you, or Google.
[/sarcasm]

[tinker_mac]

Ive had over 900 page impressions today and not even 1 click, there is something seriously wrong!

[Content_ed]

Wouldn't it be funny if they found they have the old casino problem, employee skimming? Better check those employee bank accounts:-)

I'd love for them to find a mistake that would explain why October is more than 30% down year-over-year for us after the summer was 20% down, especially if they wanted to pay us the difference in one major dollar dump!

[kurzo]

But how hard is it to roll back to the version from Thursday Oct 18th?

I am no Google engineer, but if it was my company, I would say, go back to the last stable version asap!

As others are reporting, I too have seen a significant drop in eCPM/earnings (~30%)Since Friday, Oct 19th.

I am wondering if there is something else going on - perhaps they have fully embraced 'Do Evil' >:D

[TheSkepticGuy]

I previously reported a drop in AdSense impressions that does not correspond to a drop in traffic, and it looks like an entire URL channel is missing from my data... which relates to the drop in impressions.

Is anyone else seeing this?

[netmeg]

I doubt it's as easy as just rolling things back. Everything in AdSense is also connected to AdWords (that's why they're always down for maintenance together), and possibly somewhat to Analytics, and who knows what all else we don't even know about, so whatever they do affects all the others too.